


Pilgrim

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Amicable Breakup, Comfort Sex, Dorian Pavus's Questionable Life Choices, Duty and Love, Friendship, Intimacy, M/M, Past Dorian Pavus/Male Inquisitor, Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 06:24:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6068589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian returns to Orlais for the Exalted Council, his relationship with the Inquisitor in turmoil. In the wake of the Qunari conflict, Bull finds himself similarly unmoored. The reunion with old companions may well complicate more than it solves.</p><p>(Set during the Trespasser DLC.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serenityfails](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenityfails/gifts).



> I blame Katie. For everything. ♥ This is the first half of my art trade with them. Their marvellous (and NSFW) art is [here](http://serenity-fails.tumblr.com/post/139671415871/).
> 
> There will be ~~a second part~~ ~~three~~ ~~bloody four parts~~ DONE.
> 
> Bounteous thanks to Riss, James, Toft, Adri, Lavinia and Jasper for encouragement, company and first reading.

Upon his return to Orlais after an autumn and a winter in Tevinter, Dorian learns two things.

The first dawns as he arrives at Halamshiral, a dignified delegation of one on a fine horse furnished by the Magisterium. His presence here may be meant as a diplomatic insult, but even provocation must be served in style.

Once the other ambassadors are done taking umbrage at him, come a number of more pleasant meetings. It's good to see the others. He misses, more often than not, companionship without the urbane whiff of political gain.

Inquisitor Trevelyan, who still signs his letters, _Yours always, Joachim_ , greets him with warmth. The spans between the letters grew longer in the latter half of his absence. Tevinter is far away. The Inquisitor doesn't mention that as he drags Dorian into his slanted archer's hug. The mismatch of his arms, from two decades of shooting the longbow, is familiar; Dorian holds him and tries to let the embrace soak away the miles and the months. Longing swells and recedes like a tide at their feet.

It seems one can only learn the cost of leaving on a reunion.

"I have to go let them string me up." Joachim scrubs his fingers across his gloved left palm. A new nervous gesture. "See you tonight?"

"Is that a promise?" Dorian can kiss him in greeting in the middle of the Winter Palace. There are other matters between them that won't abide such publicity.

"You have my word," Joachim says, and goes to be the Inquisitor.

  


*

  


The Maker, or fate, or sheer blind chance, proves again Varric's adage of trouble finding the Inquisitor like the Carta finds its debtors. A dead Qunari falls out of a convenient eluvian in the palace attic, Leliana ropes them all into a clandestine meeting while Josephine fends off the Exalted Council, and off they go.

Dorian takes up his old share and then some. The Divine is far too important to risk on a jaunt into the unknown; he promises Vivienne to fill her boots best as he can. "You don't have a prayer, darling." She squeezes his shoulder. "Do look after them."

"As ever." He follows the line of her glance to the Inquisitor, who is speaking to Cassandra, gripping his left hand with his right.

  


*

  


Dorian watches him soldier on through the Deep Roads, a shattered elven between-place, and finally, a Qunari outpost. They uncover the plot, expose the villain. Bull flouts her expectations in a rather satisfying manner. They save a dragon, then battle an unchained Qunari mage, which makes for two novel turns of events.

At the end of it all, the man Dorian loves--he does, after all--buckles into his arms with a bloodied stump in place of his bow arm.

In that moment, Dorian could march through the final eluvian and kill Solas with his bare hands. Well. He'd employ magic. Fire, he thinks, his palms sparking, as Cassandra props the Inquisitor up to lean on her shoulder. Dorian lets Bull take point and forces himself to stay in the moment. First shield his friends, then scorch their enemies.

He's nearly disappointed that they make it back to Halamshiral without further resistance.

While the others cluster into a secluded parlour to wait for news of the Inquisitor's condition, Leliana pulls Dorian aside.

The first letter has the Magisterium's official seal on it. The second is from his mother. He opens them in the wrong order.

  


*

  


"So much for running away to be a bravo for hire in Antiva," Joachim says the next day. The deep olive of his skin has an ashen cast, but he emerged from the council hall in one piece.

The one piece is slightly smaller now. It shows in his walk, his body striving to compensate in balance for the missing forearm. Vivienne's healing spells put him back on his feet; the rest will take more time.

"I can think of a few other options." Dorian leads the way into the guest suite: high windows full of sunlight frame a sitting room in blue silk and pale wood. Almost tasteful, for Orlais. "Perhaps being a vintner in Antiva? They have excellent farmland on the western border."

"Not that far from Qarinus?"

"That did cross my mind." Despite Sera and Varric's best efforts last night, Dorian is sober as a Chantry mother by now. His thoughts flow cold and clear. "Found a vinery and employ it as a cover for your efforts against our newest menace. You've hatched worse plans."

"Many." Joachim sits, breathes. He needs it more than he can show nearly anyone. "Are you going to ask?"

Dorian crosses his arms, then drops them slack. "It used to be easier, no? When we were just two pariah sons battling an ancient megalomaniac. The latter part still applies."

"I'm going to need a new set of strategies. The ancestral longbow won't be good for much more than mantelpiece decoration."

"Ama--Joachim." How much simpler it'd be to succumb to frippery. They have a few days, dearly bought. The letters are tucked into Dorian's vest, next to the silk-lined pouch holding the pair of enchanted crystals.

"Maybe don't ask." Joachim turns his face to the light, eyes shuttered. "Let's take another option. If we stole the best horses in the stables, we could be halfway to Jader by morning. Find a ship to Antiva."

 _Change our names and buy a vineyard. Grow old like olive trees, slowly and well._ The problem is, Dorian knows how to continue. The war made it easier to dream. One would think such strife would crush fancies rather than nurture them.

It is peace that's come to nip short his desires. Maybe that's kinder than leaving them to shrivel on the branch.

"The Magisterium is in session only six months of the year. I could..."

"You could. So could I." Joachim opens his eyes. "I swore the Inquisition to the Divine's service."

 _So this is how it ends_. Dorian looks at him. He has a gentle face, too lined for his years. For all that he can put an arrow through a hart's eye at a hundred paces, he'll keep shouting for accord while the opposition is already drawing steel.

"I want you to know," Joachim says, and his gaze seeks the lit window not out of consternation but grief, "that I don't regret a day of it."

"That is something." Dorian's throat is dusty.

"If you'll accept it, you'll always have my friendship."

One of them has lost an arm, the other a father, in the last day and a night. The timing is terrible. Dorian may not know much of romance but he knows this.

And yet. And yet. There's nothing ahead but new months to slowly saw through the memories that sustained him.

The offer is a sharp blade for a clean cut.

When Joachim reaches out, fingers reluctant, Dorian closes the handclasp. "Always," he repeats.

His other hand finds a grip of the crystals, lingers, and loosens its hold.

  


*

  


Somewhat to his surprise, Dorian tells Vivienne first.

She grants him a slim afternoon hour wedged between an envoy from Starkhaven and a fitting with her tailor. There's little doubt which engagement holds greater importance. Away from the stiff ceremonial robe, she keeps to the white and red of the Chantry, but the lines of her outfit bespeak the imperial enchanter.

"You are a fool," she says, without venom, as they lean on the banister of her private balcony. "If an admirable one. Too many in Orlais and the Marches like to pretend that Tevinter will busy itself with the Qunari forever."

"I intend to be a fool they'll preserve in marble." The view is nice, as is the sultry summer breeze. Dorian stares out towards the city of Halamshiral, nestled between the hills to the north. "With the White Divine herself endorsing my course, could I be any less?"

"Not the Inquisitor himself? I expect you've kept your association discreet with parties back home."

The silence curls in a long tendril.

"What is it?" Vivienne raises a brow. "Surely you don't expect this injury will undo him. It will change things, as it must, but he has come back from doubly worse than this."

Dorian wishes for a glass or a quill, whatever bauble to keep his fingers busy. A clasp of his robes serves. "He will. Only not to me. If you offer condolences, I will crack this balcony off the wall."

There is a reason why so many mages harness the Fade with words. Not all truths are spoken, but some must be, to be real.

"You knew what it was, darling, and still you left."

"You're the one person I don't need to tell that there are greater duties than love."

"Greater aims," Vivienne says. "Greater ambitions. Sometimes, perhaps, greater loves."

"Hah," he says, damply, and shudders with the substance of this truth. "He was far kinder to me than Tevinter is ever likely to be."

"I know." Vivienne's hand covers his fingers on the goldwork clasp. She presses his palm lightly to his heart. "Love is not kind, Dorian. It demands, and it abides, but it is your choice to follow it."

  


*

  


The green, thrumming days of Solace chase each other across the river valley. The Inquisition was declared for Divine Victoria, yet turns of protocol remain. The terms and conditions of the Inquisition keeping an outpost in Skyhold are hammered out over four days. Afterwards, Dorian rescues Josephine to the quietest soirée they can find. She drinks a whole bottle of unmixed claret and hatches, over the evening, a plan for ruining the members of the Fereldan delegation unto three generations.

The rest of them wait, recover, and debate when their voices are called for. Tevinter has no real stake in the fate of the Inquisition, so Dorian uses the time to speak to those participants who take a more perspicacious tack to him than _that blowhard Tevinter from the Inquisitor's company_. He has groundwork to lay. His ties to the south can be more than a quirk now, with the vacancy of his father's magisterial seat.

He tries not to dwell on that. Help comes from diverse sources: Sera drags him to the tavern for dice and spiked cider, and leaves a foul hangover cure on his pillow after heaving him into bed. Listening to Varric's stories of accidental viscountship and Cassandra's dreams of a new day for the Seekers, he nearly feels normal.

No one sees much of the Inquisitor. Vivienne restored him to health but not to strength; convalescence notwithstanding, he's the most sought-after man in Halamshiral. This no doubt saves Dorian from a few awkward moments, but it also leaves him the duty to spread the news before gossip finishes the work for him.

"I'm thinking, fake his death." Sera walks a plump grape over her knuckles, then pops it into her mouth. "Rig a trellis to fall on him, smuggle him to a country estate to sleep for a month. Viv has to have a dozen."

"So he can emerge again in our hour of direst need?" Dorian interjects, because it's expected.

"Everyone loves a good revival," Bull observes from across the table. The tavern drowses, the lamps low and the kitchen shut for the night. In the next table over, Cassandra and Blackwall are studying what seem to be maps and supplies lists, her plans inching forward.

"Yeah. Like snogging at the end. It's a--a Varric thing. A trope."

"Dorian's got the kissing covered," Bull says, because naturally he does, "so how do we set up the rest? The boss is looking a little worse for wear."

"Josephine will arrange all our permanent exiles to the Anderfels for that."

"If she's feeling nice, that is." The grapes are becoming a skewed pyramid under Sera's hands. "Can't. Finally got it good in Orlais. Other than doing the _rrr_ like I'm being gagged."

" _Parfait_ ," says Dorian. "Then we shouldn't darken your haven with any well-intentioned incidents."

He only realises how glum he sounded when Bull pushes a filled mug of cider into his hands. While it isn't Cabot's most terrible brew, it is a thing to share with friends.

"Thank you," he says, half under his breath, and drinks. Bull hums some shade of _no trouble_ in reply as Sera kicks her chair back from the table.

"I have to go check on some real mischief now. Market tomorrow? Before you put down roots in those chairs."

"Tell that to him." Dorian jabs his thumb at Bull.

"You want me to tag along while you do your gladhanding, all you gotta do is ask." Bull hefts one shoulder in a shrug. "I sent the boys off on a job, so not much is happening."

"My attempts at connections would be unlikely to benefit from your picturesque presence."

"Hey, I'm great with people."

"And I need to be gone." Sera knuckles Dorian's shoulder, pats Bull on the head for the evident pleasure of being able to reach, and whisks off.

"That girl is going places." Bull sounds proud, as if he'd had a personal hand in Sera's burgeoning empire of subversion and sabotage.

"By 'places' you mean the coffers and knicker drawers of half the Heartlands coast." Stretching out his spine, Dorian glances around the tavern. It serves as a watering hole for whatever soldiers mill around the palace--royal guards or the militias of visiting nobles. To him it suggests comfort. Not the specific space but the idea of it; the tables, the lamps, the susurrus of familiar voices.

"Sure," Bull says. "She's grabbed onto something that's worth it."

Dorian almost manages to swallow his sigh. It becomes a soft ebb of breath.

"Haven't we all?" He lowers his voice upon gesturing at Cassandra and Blackwall. "She has a purpose, he has a calling. Not the capital-letter one yet, one hopes. You have your merry band of misfits."

"Add one thing to the list and I'll drink to that." Bull wraps his fingers loose around his mug.

"Pray tell."

"Your own part."

  


*

  


Dorian lets his palm dwell against the glazed curve of the mug. The cider is golden and cloudy, specks of candlelight dashed across the surface.

"Restoring Tevinter to the meanest measure of reputation will be a start. The work of a lifetime, of course, even for me."

"Picking up your inheritance after all." Bull's tone is warm and impenetrable in equal measure. "I hope you slept on that."

A scoff bursts from Dorian. "Please. Varric already gave me the cautionary speech."

"He ever step foot in a Tevinter court? Not that I doubt his good intentions, just wondering if he used strong enough language."

"More recently than you, I'd warrant." Given Varric's familial ties to Mae's delightful, deceased husband. In some ways, Thedas is a small place.

Dorian can't quite tell whether the noise Bull makes is one of agreement or discontent.

"What is this? Another well-meant intervention, to dissuade me from my fool's errand?"

His shoulders flexing, Bull leans back in the chair. The lamps split the shadow of his horns into a twinned silhouette along the wall behind him. "If that's an honest question--"

"Yes. I suppose it is."

"Then it deserves an honest answer." Bull's mug leaves a wet circle on the table as he lifts it. "My friend is going to walk back into the second worst shithole I know in the world and shovel till he finds the supposed gold under all that crap. I might worry."

"Well," Dorian says, a little raspy. "That is evocative."

So much, then, for continuing his chicanery over that particular topic. He may not have been hiding the decision so much as the way it bites into his bones, a unshiftable burden.

"It's the truth."

Dorian has witnessed Bull's consummate touch with handling people: he can be gentle with a skittish soldier in one breath and all axe-hewn camaraderie with her fellows in the next. Their friendship is hedged in the same companionship, common ground found in cheap beer and esoteric trivia, in a fondness for a fight and a desire to do good, and, slowly, in thorny longing for homes that spat each of them out into the wider world.

Now Dorian has carved himself a renewed foothold in that home.

"This was always my plan." He draws a vexed finger through the circle of moisture from Bull's mug. "I wonder if you can fault me for sticking to it. You stood up to the Viddasala, after all."

Surprise ripples through Bull's indrawn breath. "What in the void has that got to do with you going back to Tevinter?"

"She thought she could sway you," Dorian says. "You held to your resolution. Is mine not worth the same effort, in the face of an easier path?"

A path he could have taken with Joachim. Another swig of cider doesn't suffice to wash off the knowledge.

"She had nothing to sway me with." Bull points his words somewhere past Dorian. "Against you, Cassandra and the boss? I wouldn't fancy my odds." Ignoring Dorian's grimace at the idea, he goes on, "Even if I'd lived... Well. There's a good chance _qamek_ would've been involved."

" _Venhedis_." Dorian's mind moves swiftly. He could've lived without the images that Bull's words paint in piercing detail. "If I am to believe your tall tales, you were one of their best. Even so?"

"I filled my quota of trespasses on the Storm Coast."

 _The Qunari waste nothing._ So a burned dreadnought would outweigh the recovery of a brilliant agent, but if a strong, compliant labourer could be dug from the ashes of that blaze... A chill part of Dorian's mind says, _You aim for the Magisterium. You could learn from their ways._

"I'm sorry." He lays a firm, purposeful hand on Bull's wrist, his fingers curling into a grip. "For what I said. Never for your conviction."

A thrum in Bull's throat builds into a genuine guffaw, and Dorian feels his heart ease. "Glad you specified that, 'Vint."

"I still must return." There is his father's estate to resolve, his mother to speak to. A dozen relatives to fend off, a hundred calculated condolences to receive with the proper shade of haughty grace. A country to rebuild. "I don't plan to stay away forever. The south grows on one."

"Like rashvine." Bull switches the mug to his free hand to drink, slower than the cider deserves.

"Or arbour blessing. The trouble is that I could argue for both."

"Shit, Sera's right." Even in the hazy lamp-glow, Bull's eye gleams with humour. "We're all old and long-winded. Look at you, making this all about shades of grey."

"Was it ever simple?" Dorian shifts forward. The cider may be palatable rather than remarkable, but it warms him. " 'Close the Breach or the world ends', that was straightforward. Everything surrounding it...." He lets the thought float and catch. "He did make it look easy, much of the time."

"The boss?"

"Yes." To deny it would be to mire himself deeper. "He rather is... a bastion, no?"

"That's one good word." With a tug, Bull moves his hand, and Dorian realises he never let go. The bones of Bull's wrist are solid under his fingers, but he pulls his hand away, as casually as he can.

"All right," he says, with a gauzy laugh. "A watchtower. With the postern gate underneath it, if we keep to the fortification theme."

"She can be the bulwark." Bull cants his head towards Cassandra, who is rolling up her papers. Blackwall must have made a quiet exit a moment ago. Dorian... was preoccupied. "Do you want to talk about it, or just drink and reminisce some more?"

"I beg your pardon?" Dorian staggers into the polite register like into a supporting column, a pinnacle to steady his careening mind. "What would 'it' happen to be?"

Bull's fingers press into the back of his neck, but then he says, "The fact that you're not snogging the boss anymore."

  


*

  


The fact of the matter is: love survives absence. Love endures the grime of journeys and the grief of sleepless nights, the empty beds and the aches of longing, like hidden embers in the hearth.

There are other things that must last, so they can be lit from the dozing glow.

For a moment, Dorian contemplates leaving. The hour is late and the tavern vacant, now that even Cassandra waved her goodnights to them in passing. He races across other thoughts-- _how many of them know by now; why Bull, out of all of them; of course Bull, he sees everyone_ \--like they were a maze, one looming cul-de-sac after another.

In the same silence, Bull lets him wind through the gauntlet. There's no demand in his posture.

"Joachim is the linchpin of this entire operation," Dorian says at last. "He is... a centre to them all. He needs someone who will be his centre."

Love is not the problem. Their paths have always branched and twisted, but once upon a time they could walk them together.

"I fear I'm more of a wandering star than a fixed one," he concludes, shaking his head. "Please make me stop before I run out of synonyms for 'a constant'."

"Here I was making a list." A damnable trace of mirth there, before Bull's voice drops. "That's rough. You want another of this--" He taps on the cider jug, "--or should I break behind the bar for the stronger stuff?"

"You'd pick a lock for the sake of my heartbreak." Dorian surely hopes the tavern keeper has enough sense to put the alcohol stocks under bolt and latch in a place like this. "I'm flattered, dear friend. The cider will do."

He sips, and tries to focus on the taste of apples. Bull knocks their mugs together. "You look like you're holding up. Pretty sure you fooled most of the others. Maybe not Sera."

"She is frighteningly astute these days." All of them, cherished companions, in motion that looped them back together but may never do so again. Duty tugs him in one direction, affection in another. "I'll mourn when it's time. I'm fine."

"That time's not now?" _While you're among friends_ , Dorian fills in the part Bull does not speak.

"I could ask the same of you," he says, low enough to nearly be lost even in the stillness. He can all but hear the last crackles and hisses of the coals settling in the covered grate. "We're not on a job right now. You can breathe, you know."

He's thwarting. That doesn't make his concern misplaced.

"A hurt for a hurt, huh." Dorian watches Bull lean his elbow on the table. It's a guarded gesture on him; usually he sets himself open and upfront, shoulders back, limbs flung out.

"After what you said..." Does he wish to prod this potential beehive? "I know you and the Qun parted ways long ago."

"To put it like a 'Vint."

"I'm practicing," Dorian retorts. "I'm trying to say, you got the better bargain. Certainly I'm not an impartial observer, but you have a place in the world. No shortage of people ready to crack heads and break into ghastly tavern songs with you."

What he would not give, at times, to have Josephine's gentle gift for pinning down people's sorrows, or even Vivienne's talent at poking the precise sore spot that leads to clarity.

"You know what I mean." He sighs. Bull keeps his scantly lidded eye on him. Their sideways glances meet across the table, faint and comfortable, like wafts of warm air flowing together.

Dorian remembers the heft of Bull's wrist under his fingers.

"Throw in a good tumble now and then and I'm set," Bull says. "Soulful late-night talks with my second favourite 'Vint, that's practically spoiling me."

Skewing back to aim, Dorian kicks him in the right shin under the table. "Second favourite? Well, I would not oust Cremisius from his hard-earned place."

"Guess you can share." A long breath trickles from Bull. He jostles Dorian's foot back with his own. "Since you're going off to save that pit of vipers in a few days."

"It is a sacrifice. I'll miss the snow, and the dirt-brown fashions, and the thick sprinkling of dog on everything east of the Frostbacks." The last swallow of cider stings Dorian's tongue. "A select few liberties, too."

He can seek once more the muffled delights Minrathous has to offer. It is no consolation, in matters of lust or love. His carefully crafted schemes with Mae might be: if he's too busy bringing change to the Imperium, perhaps he can deaden his own memories.

The south taught a poignant lesson. The world is wide enough for love to grow, yet, it seems, too broad for the roots of it to hold together.

When Bull speaks, his tone rings casual. Beneath, something crackles, like sap in a flame. "A last sample of southern freedom, before you go?"

"Uh," says Dorian, hauling his thoughts back from their byroad. He must've missed the beginning of this. "I imagine. If I can find an eligible gentleman among this lot. My tastes don't run entirely Orlesian."

It's not as if his tastes even ran the way of the stalwart Inquisitor as such. But one thing holds carnal appeal, and another speaks to the deep-buried murmurs of the heart.

"Good thing I wasn't talking about the Orlesians, then." There's something soft and something canny in Bull's countenance.

"Andraste wept," Dorian says. "You absolute terror of a man. You're propositioning me."

"No call to be rude." Bull flicks a finger against Dorian's, a tap of contact. A spout of heat pours down his spine, spreading slow. "Just saying. It's not a bad way to clear your head."

"And you fancy yourself a suitable--" Allowing himself the spell of delirium burgeoning in his mind, Dorian gives Bull a look. Not an amicable or concerned glance. The sort of survey one reserves for more prurient pursuits.

"That depends on your fancy. I'm good, as long as you can look me in the eye in the morning."

That _is_ a question, Dorian must agree. One fucks a friend at one's own peril, sometimes. More so when said friend is also a boon companion to one's recent paramour.

If he knows one person he'd trust to navigate that peril, it might well be Bull.

"How much of this conversation have you been flirting with me?" A little more languid than necessary, Dorian stands.

"Since the part about my favourite 'Vint?" Bull nearly manages innocence. For him, it's quite a feat. "Look, you say no, there's no harm done. If it's too soon..."

Dorian laughs, a bark of mirth. Their hands rest on the table, an inch apart. "I was last naked with anyone, outside of the baths, back in Kingsway last year."

"Yeah," Bull says. "After all this shit, I figure we could both use a distraction."

His throat moves, flexes and stills, as he speaks. The dreamy, diffident whim solidifies in Dorian. They've killed for each other. Dorian's bandaged Bull's injuries, had Bull carry him back to camp bleeding and mindless with pain. They've shared victory toasts and the choking weight of arriving too late. Shared, too, the quieter agonies of distance and alienation, and blooming, bright memories of places whose names ring as mere echoes to their other friends.

"Your room. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm sure the servants know by now to expect noise."

"Is that a veiled dig, or are you making plans?" Dorian had a theoretical notion of how Bull's voice might dip, laced with rough invitation. The idea pales next to the reality.

"I can be quiet." Dorian lets his smile show teeth. "I rather prefer not to be."

Steady and irresistible, Bull's hand closes around his wrist, and Bull pulls him around the table and to the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating is up, as predicted.
> 
> Mad acknowledgments to Katy and James for a bang-up beta, and to Mary and Toft for patting my head as I agonised over this one.

The next day, Dorian has a politically advantageous supper with Comtesse de Mourier in the palace garden. While the comtesse witters on about her family's trade interests in the Southern Imperium, Dorian's mind meanders back to the fading imprints of fingers on his hips, or to the slick press of Bull's cock between his thighs. His limbs move in easier arcs today, and if his thoughts wander then his senses are glitteringly awake.

He'd had a whim to be loud. He did not anticipate how it'd be to whisper instead, to feel Bull shiver at nothing but Dorian's hushed voice in his ear.

A distraction. Oh, it served its purpose. The memories at least sweeten the stress of casting a hundred lines and guessing which ones he can afford to tug; the forging of understanding is a slow, delicate business.

That evening Varric gathers a few of them for a game of Diamondback, and Dorian slips into the empty chair next to Bull. Elation blooms in him when, after three rounds, Bull gives the first unflattering opinion on his honesty relative to his two wins so far. Dorian returns fire with a crude gesture and loses the next round on some warped principle.

It is nice, he thinks in passing, to have one simple, reliable thing right now.

As they sort out their final tallies, a servant arrives to inform them that Lord Trevelyan invites them all to have supper with him tomorrow. Dorian's chat with Sera turns into a hasty, muttered goodnight.

He will go, of course. This reunion will end too soon, whatever barbs bristle under the old camaraderie.

The meal is quiet and intimate, the sort Joachim would always host had he the choice. Vivienne lent him her parlour; she even joins them for the first two courses before making a silk-smooth exit. Dorian uses the small pause to detour towards Josephine, who looks like she's sitting down for the first time in days, and makes himself add to her burdens: he needs a ship to Nevarra soon. The clout of the Inquisition's chief ambassador would speed his search.

She presses his hand with fretful, delicate fingers that still into the grip, and promises to do what she can.

Then Dorian goes back to his seat on Joachim's left, on the side of his maimed arm, to listen to Varric pull together a plan from across the table.

"Say the word and I'll write to Bianca. She'd be happy to have a new challenge."

"The crossbow _is_ impressive," Joachim says, "but a mechanical arm? Out of shafts and gears?"

"She could just stick a crossbow on a wooden arm, right?" Sera waves a forkful of herb-marinated lamb for emphasis. "One of those tiny Antivan ones."

Joachim shakes his head. "I won't be back in the field for a while. I have some sword lessons to recall. This won't make a bow arm anymore, but it might do as a shield hand."

Salvage what you can. Refuse to put the loss above moving forward. Dorian doesn't know what proportion of Joachim's words is bravado or pretext, but he dearly hopes it's the smaller part.

"We can begin whenever you are fit for it." Cassandra has sat quiet, but raises her voice from beside Sera now. "I won't be leaving yet. I've been asked to sit on the Divine's council."

"I'll drink to that first part," Bull declares, and the clink and clatter of their goblets raised in a toast breaks up the conversation.

"To your health," Dorian says to the Inquisitor. The rims of their goblets chime together. They've hardly spent more than a moment in the same room in the last week; still, they keep slotting into each other's pauses and gestures. Does the facade matter to anyone here?

"And to yours," Joachim says, in the same undertone. "I do wish you well."

 _Who is it that sees past your walls now?_ Cassandra, perhaps--she and Joachim have always been close, however much they argue. Josephine, or even Cullen, both of whom share the Inquisitor's even-keeled nature.

Dorian might simply rue that he can no longer claim that right. That they've stepped backwards to this shadow play of platitudes, when the very things that drew him to Joachim were his plain-spoken attitude and his ability to show his heart without fearing what the world might stab in it.

The role of the Inquisitor demands a facade, whether a ball mask or a soldier's helmet. Joachim's words are honest; they are also hand-picked, like his truest arrows for the chanciest shots.

Well. Dorian just returned from Tevinter. He has recently revisited his lessons in pretence.

When Blackwall inquires as to the Inquisition's future plans, Dorian sighs in relief. The conversation turns to strategies and connections as the dessert arrives. Blackwall stages a rough map out of cutlery and dainty spice dishes, and Dorian can contribute an offer of setting some wheels in motion as soon as he is back in Qarinus.

He doesn't look at Joachim as he makes it. _It is done. Let it lie._

Finally dessert is done and they're draining the last of their drinks. Dorian nearly drops his goblet at the not-too-subtle grip of a hand on his shoulder.

"A moment of your time?" Cassandra looks down at him, keen as a bird of prey. 

"Of course." Dorian puts down his wine with a ruffled flair. "No need to ambush me."

As Cassandra says a few words to Joachim, Dorian gets to his feet and nods his goodbyes to the others. She doesn't quite frog-march him into the corridor, but her gait is martial for their gilded surroundings.

"You have a horse, I assume?" She tugs at her tabard, brocaded with the wreathed eye and blade of the Inquisition.

"Yes. Naturally. Cassandra, what--"

"Then we are going riding. There's a lovely forest path along the river, on the imperial hunting grounds."

Dorian breathes, in and out. The Maker be his witness, he esteems her, but the years have not cushioned her manner. "First, you'll be so kind as to explain what I've done to offend."

"If I had a grievance, I wouldn't have waited three courses to tell you." That elicits a laugh from him, and Cassandra hums in answer. "I need the wind in my face. So do you. There's been a furrow between your brows for a week."

"This is cause to manhandle me from the table, I take it." Their boots sound in ringing unison on the stairway as they descend.

"I couldn't wait much longer," she says, with untimely gentleness. "One or the other of you was going to sink under the table just to get away."

Dorian looks down at his reflection on the burnished marble floor. "Tell me. Is there a point in pretending anymore?"

Her shrug is curiously small. "I do not know. He told me weeks ago."

A weight jams against his ribcage. Joachim has the right--Dorian has to remind himself--to reach out to others that he loves. Just as Dorian does. He imagines, too, that any heart-to-hearts with Cassandra involve less of being pinned to walls or leaving bites that will bruise than Dorian's own closure-seeking has.

He brushes a hand at Cassandra's elbow. "It's a fine idea, a ride. I have been a bit cooped up."

  


*

  


The splendid horse appointed to Dorian by the Magisterium can hardly keep up with Cassandra's nimble, painted Fereldan strider. Following the riverside path through meadows strewn with high-summer flowers and groves of ash and oak, they ride where generations of Orlesian royalty have amused themselves at the hunt. Dorian is content to chase the wind; its humid waft entails rain, but the air moves briskly enough to stay cool and mellow.

"From here, you could fit the palace in the palm of your hand." Dorian points down the curving, shallow slope that will bring them back to the palace gates.

Patting her gusting horse on the neck, Cassandra turns his way. "Our troubles are often a matter of perspective, no? You look a little better."

"I'm not sure that a contemplation of distance will help me," he says, sincerely. "The ride has, however."

She purses her mouth in thought, then nods. "Distance on a smaller scale, perhaps. Come. We might still make it back before dark."

  


*

  


Back in the simmering bustle of the stableyard--visiting nobles from two countries keep the palace staff pressed--Dorian spies a line of familiar horses. A medley of voices in varied Common accents signals the return of the Chargers. With a stumble-inducing clap on Skinner's shoulder, ignoring her dirty look, Bull detaches himself from the cluster of his mercenaries.

"Hey, Cassandra! Red was looking for you."

"Please let it be about our plans in the north rather than my inescapable council seat." Cassandra knuckles her brow.

"Seemed like a need-to-know basis thing, so it might be the latter." Bull shrugs, wry sympathy in his eye.

"There goes my evening then." She dismounts and, as a stablehand steps forward to take charge of her horse, glances back over her shoulder. "Dorian."

"Until later. If you don't return by the midnight bell, we shall mount a rescue."

"I'll be much obliged," she retorts, dry as bone, and leaves Dorian with Bull in the middle of the yard.

"So you got back with all your fingers and toes still attached," Bull says, tilting his head up at Dorian. "Sera owes me a royal."

"Oh? Was I in some grave danger without even knowing?"

"We may have played a guessing game about what the Seeker was planning to do with you."

"You are a bunch of hopeless miscreants." Dorian yanks off his glove and spreads his right hand by way of proof. "See? No missing digits whatsoever."

Bull's three fingers cup loosely around his hand, so Bull can inspect the palm, with equal dramatic relish. "No cuts in the palm or wood slivers under the nails, either."

" _Vishante kaffas_ , you horror." Indignity serves to counter the suspicious bloom of warmth in Dorian's throat. "It was a perfectly pleasant ride."

He almost regrets his prickliness when Bull's eye cinches with something like approval. "That's good. Glad to hear it."

Sentiment from Bull is not that rare, but the uncomplicated way he says it, like Dorian's happiness were worthy of care, makes Dorian pause. "Right then. May I have--"

He has his space returned before the words even form. Smothering the urge to shake himself, he slides down from the saddle. A stableboy sneaks the reins from his hand as soon as his boots strike the ground. Even his mother could hardly find fault with this efficiency.

Thoughts of his mother also make for a poor refuge from the moment. Bull did ask-- _as long as you can look me in the eye in the morning_ \--and Dorian did answer, and they both had a marvellous time of it.

Around them torches are being lit in the wrought-iron sconces to cast back the dusk. The stableyard is a crossroads, not a place to linger. Dorian finds himself caught between making an excuse to leave and drawing out the moment in all its breath-catching ambiguities. 

"I do have to go now," he says, which is a kind of truth. Unanswered letters gather on the desk in his rooms: requests, invitations, even a handful of condolences from parties who imagine sympathy for his bereavement might win them something.

"Same here." Bull's mouth quirks. "Krem's going to tell me a story about the Chantry-minded comtesse and how she found out that Dalish was shooting pretty big flaming arrows at her giant spider problem, and it'd better be a damn great one."

"I'm sure it will." Dorian allows a tint of devilment into his voice. If Bull sounds that cavalier, he has a way to smooth the situation over. Then, before he loses the momentum, "Drinks and cards tomorrow? There's a chess set in my rooms, too, come to think of it."

"You have the game, sounds like I ought to bring the drinks." Bull laughs. A good, resonant sound, like a finely cast bell.

"Then we have a plan." Dorian permits himself one backward glance as he goes. Chess and alcohol. That at least ought to be well-trod ground for them.

  


*

  


A little-slept night and a hectic day later, as the evening bell sounds from the stuccoed steeples of the palace chantry, Dorian lays out the chess board on the table in his present sitting room. Ambassadorial privilege landed him in smallish two-room quarters, the bedchamber tucked behind the parlour. Two meetings done, a hasty bath had, and his letter pile cloven by a third, he feels justified in stealing away the evening.

Sooner rather than later, the Exalted Council will wind down. Even without an exact count of days, the oncoming harvest season sets a spur in the flank of every landowner in attendance.

He's pouring more oil into a hanging lamp when Bull knocks. Dorian shuts the door as soon as Bull's over the threshold, holding out a bottle of tawny wine. The faded label shows the ink-drawn silhouette of a wispy figure in armour.

Dorian stares. "Briathos's Stand? Bull, this is contraband in six Orlesian provinces."

"Which is why I don't want to lug it around too long," Bull says merrily. "Let's say someone wanted to be very sure of my goodwill today."

Someone who, perhaps, knows in whose ear to whisper for fabled Dalish vintages.

"I won't ask. This is too fine to water down, though."

"We'll drink it slowly. Extend our pinkies while we do. That's sophisticated."

"I am just about choked on decorum after today," Dorian says, with feeling. "A sipping wine in good company, though, that is welcome."

Bull's shoulder nudges across his, a mellow sweep, as Bull makes his way to a chair by the board. Dorian breathes in his presence like a calming incense.

Back in the days of the war, their chess games could span days or weeks. Dorian kept track of the board on a piece of vellum he scraped clean in between games. Now, Bull wins the first when Dorian slips up and loses both his towers early. He can't blame the wine. He drinks with the tip of his tongue, as the Nevarran saying goes.

"I take it you appeased the wrath of the comtesse?" he asks midway through the second game.

"Krem slipped in the words 'the Divine's new honour guard' and 'special dispensation for combat magic'." Bull corners Dorian's remaining mage. He might lose this round, too.

"The Chargers, running security for the Divine. There is an image."

"We're on contract with the Inquisition." Bull's eye tracks Dorian's hand as he lets it hover above one piece, then another. "It was a pretty white lie. Creamy, maybe."

"Anything on the paler side of dove grey should be fine." Dorian's fingers flex without his leave. "You did tell Vivienne?"

"She can swing an inquiry from some catchpenny comtesse. I did." Bull trails a whorl in the painted wood of the table. A ragged scar remains along his forefinger and first knuckle, where a dagger point grazed through his studded glove.

Dorian has an urge to trace the line, for the contrast of scar and skin. For the heat it might light in Bull's eye.

He moves his queen instead.

Three more turns: Dorian rescues his mage at the cost of a pawn, Bull advances on his dwindlingly shielded king. The pieces, carved from stormheart and summer stone, clip on the rosewood board. Rain patters on a window left ajar.

With the downpour and the hanging lamps, their circular, graded shadows haloed with light on the floor, the world is softly bounded.

Bull walks a piece across the board with his scarred, steady hand. "Mage takes tower."

Dorian sputters into the illicit elven berry wine. Bull's smile crooks like the best of bad ideas.

" _That_ is how you wish to play this?"

"It's your move."

Oh. Innuendo and reassurance in the same three words. Dorian almost feels proud.

"I trust you'll make it worth my while if I forfeit the game."

"I never said I was above dirty tricks," Bull says. Dorian groans, rolling his eyes; then Bull leans forward over the table and douses such petty concerns as awful puns. "As long as you say yes."

The game, at that point, does not have a prayer.

  


*

  


"By all objective measuring sticks," Dorian says, "that was a deplorable come-on." Their route here took a few switches and turns, but now they're mutually undressed, and Bull is seated on the bed, the abundant pillows pushed back to make room. The rain on the windows has become a sluice of sound as the thick of the cloudburst passes overhead.

Bull palms Dorian's buttocks firmly, tugging him in between his knees. "Then you're the guy with the terrible taste in this picture."

Curling his toes into the ram's wool carpet covering the bedroom floor, Dorian deems it acceptable. "I think it also allows for interpretation."

"Mmm." Bull's thumb presses into the crease of Dorian's hip and leg. "You want me to tell you what to do?"

Isn't that a thought. Under Bull's languid tone lies a softer query with a sharper tip.

Dorian reaches a hand between them, fingers sure around Bull's balls. A little pain seems to wind him tighter, but the tipping point is fine here. Bull drags in air in a deep, slow flare of his chest.

"I might," Dorian says. If not a promise, then a wish laces itself into the words. "I had another sort of taking in mind, for now."

"Hey." Bull brings that same thumb up to Dorian's lower lip. A tinge of salt and musk brushes his nose. "I'm good."

"Aren't you just," Dorian huffs, sweetened with a laugh that surprises him, too.

Before he gets lost in contemplation, he kneels on the carpet and wraps his lips over the crown of Bull's cock.

  


*

  


If cornered, Dorian might've admitted to an inkling of academic curiosity. A man hardly lives to thirty-three without some personal epiphanies. Add to that certain inevitable aspects of the itinerant life: communal nudity in the baths or along a convenient body of water, and lacking the luxury of modesty when someone is spilling their lifeblood to the ground.

That is to say, he's seen Bull naked. The maimed knee, the scars that spread as if his skin were a palimpsest, layer upon layer of notes of old violence. The heavy cock that curves smooth and spit-glistening under lazy passes of Dorian's tongue.

Bull's hand rests behind Dorian's head, stroking from the topmost knob of his spine to the base of his skull. Dorian toys with the idea of _You can grip harder_ , of Bull thrusting into his mouth at his own pleasure.

He leans in deeper. Bull shifts a knee wider, and a hoarse breath punctuates his quiet. "Ah."

Dorian lets his brief thought slither away. His fingers fist on the shaft, tease the head, while he presses a wet, taut tongue behind Bull's balls.

"Fuck," Bull says, stifled. "Oh, yeah. Dorian." The syllables of his name rasp in Bull's mouth. Dorian's breath shudders with it.

So, impolitely, he kisses the inside of Bull's thigh, Bull's cock glancing against his temple. The edge of his teeth leaves little phantoms of hurt to swell in the skin.

"Bull," he says; a retort is a retort, "May I--"

Too easy, that. Dorian would like plenty, has barely sampled here. How Bull would feel inside him, the decadent thickness of him, the pace they'd set. How it might be to kiss him.

Something in Dorian shirks. Another part blooms with an ache, like a jolted bruise, like a stroked palm.

Sex is a good place to lose oneself: it shrives time into only the now, as if the burning lamps had never been lit, as if they might never fade.

"May you what?" Bull breaks into Dorian's pause, shifting a bit. "Go on. Because right now, I'm pretty easy."

Lifting his head hazily, Dorian considers. A good place to lose oneself, in either being or doing. "Would you lie back for me?" 

Bull shoves away a couple of pillows as he hoists himself up the bed. The muslin insect net, draped back for the day, snags on a horn tip, and Dorian scampers up to unentangle it. "I have it, please hold still..."

Straddling Bull's thigh, he lifts the thin fabric away. Bull huffs a laugh. " 'May I', 'would you', 'please'--are you always this polite in bed?"

"Oh? If you'd rather be mocked, I--" The gossamer glibness thickens into a lump in Dorian's throat.

 _Always_ , Bull asked with unchipped casualty. More like _not in months._ _Always_ , such as _with the same person._

The flat of Bull's hand lands against his shoulder. Such restraint, when Dorian sits naked astride his leg. "Honest question," Bull says. His lip is darkened and faintly damp; the implication stings and satisfies, and Dorian doesn't know which will win out.

"Yes?"

"Is this what you need?"

 _Am I what you need?_ Dorian has observed that even now, years after his exile from the Qun, Bull grounds himself in a sense of communality. He knows his own joys, but he's quick to adjust, to help, to fill the empty places in others, not out of duty but care.

Maybe, after their recent embroilment with the Qunari, a reminder of where he is wanted would not go amiss. Dorian cranes his head, sweeping a glance across the overwrought scrollwork lining the ceiling, and presses a hand between Bull's clavicles. His blood beats a steady tempo under Dorian's palm.

"I... There's been much that's happened to me recently." Needless to elaborate. His dead father, his let-down lover, his political tug-of-war here and in Tevinter. Leave them be. The lamps light only this room.

"So much the first time didn't quite cut it?" Damn Bull, and damn the irrepressible cant of humour in his tone. Three days ago they had a brisk, brilliant fuck, wrapped with goodnights when Dorian stole back to his room.

Now, Dorian puts their heads together, a gentle knock of temples. "I want you to fuck me. I want you to, quite possibly, tie me down and make me beg. But I'd touch you now."

Bull inhales the warm air moving between them. "Mm-hm." His hand curls around Dorian's shoulder.

"One more thing." This, Dorian must say so he can look Bull in the eye, so he pulls back a scant forearm's length. "I don't need you to be anything or anyone but you."

Bull's expression loosens, his eye wider, his brows rounder, a laugh ravelling free. "Right. Well. That was a pretty good way you were going."

"Ah." Abrupt, glowing pleasure that Dorian can't fully quantify, twists through him. "Shall I go on?"

The stroke of Bull's thumb across his mouth, drawing open his lower lip, is rather answer enough.

  


*

  


Sweat sheens both their skin as Dorian slides down, trailing Bull's chest, the edge of his ribcage that rises at a breath, then his belly. There's a loose and languid joy to this, to moving over and against one another. Still hard most of the way, Bull's cock stirs with interest when Dorian paints the underside with a testing fingertip.

It is, by all accounts, a very nice cock. Dorian kisses the head, tongue soft, all slippery warmth.

Fingers curling into his hair, Bull tugs hard enough to make him gasp in pin-edged delight. Bull mutters through his teeth, and Dorian could dwell and tease, oh, how he could. Instead he dips further down. The angle isn't ideal, but Bull shifts to make way for him. Dorian smells him sharply, sweat and soap--something suspiciously flowery--and the wash of his arousal.

Dorian licks slowly and carefully across Bull's hole. The touch shudders through Bull's frame, and Dorian waits through the flexing and slackening of Bull's grip on his head. Fabric rustles under his tensing body. Repeating the small movement, the other way, he feels the rim give under his tongue. His right hand wraps around Bull's cock.

For a moment the only sound is their breathing, Dorian's quick but controlled, Bull's soft and shallow. Patience, coiled and held.

It seems a wonder: the way Bull opens to him, allows this, the nearness, the space that is limited by their bodies in their nebulous, changing accord.

Dorian sucks a wet, lingering kiss into him, his hand tight on his shaft. Bull groans, bucking under his hold.

That'll do as encouragement. He pushes deeper lick by curving lick.

"Fuck." Bull's voice tatters in a way that has Dorian clinging to his own restraint. "Fuck, sweetheart. That's good."

Dorian laughs, panting and pleased, and lets his gasps skim over Bull's hole, slick from his mouth, just to hear Bull swear shakily above him.

"I'm sure--I'm sure I can do even better."

"Uh-huh? That... might take some less talking." It is not to Dorian's credit if Bull can still form whole sentences.

Resolution made, Dorian sets himself to the task: precise strokes of his tongue, as deep as he can comfortably go. When he draws back to mouth at the rim, Bull withdraws his hand and lets Dorian kiss the hot, pliant skin as slow as he likes.

Another thought there: Maker, how can he stay so still? Dorian slides a hand up the inside of Bull's leg, wound with tension under his fingers.

"Dorian," Bull says, and in that faraway tone lies part of his answer. _I could make him come from only this._ The thought is heady as wine, bright as a summer's day.

"Yes," Dorian mutters. "Yes."

He dips his tongue into Bull, lips firm and mobile against him. The bed creaks when Bull jars at the touch, like the first tremor of a groundswell. Hastening to stroke him again, squeezing the crown, Dorian pushes all else aside. Only this, only the unison of their intent and movement.

Bull comes with a smothered shout, clenching under Dorian's mouth, and Dorian leans up to suck the last of his spend from the tender tip of his cock.

"Damn." Bull's fingers curl and uncurl, then take Dorian's arms to haul him up. Uncaring of the mess, Dorian alights atop Bull, who tips his head to kiss his doubtlessly ruined hair and his temple. Breathy, hazy kisses, scattered down his jaw. He closes his eyes for the span of a steadying breath.

"So," he says then, with a dram of self-satisfaction, arms crossed haphazardly over Bull's chest. "Mage takes tower."

Bull's laughter rumbles underneath him. "Anyone ever tell you that you're a rotten smartass?"

"Give me a moment to clean up, and you're welcome to render me speechless."

  


*

  


Dorian's heart will not calm. Even as he putters about briefly, tossing Bull a washcloth, he is prickled with awareness. Feeling Bull unravel under him tinged the longing that's hounded him for days, stirring it from a low thrum to a rush in his ears.

Bull must see it. He misses so little.

"What's your fancy, then?" Bull trails an undulating line down Dorian's side. No hesitation there. They touch each other like they fight: fitting into each other's turns and moves with long familiarity.

"How about you decide?" Dorian crooks his mouth. "If it's not to my liking, I'll tell you, but I have every faith."

The glint in Bull's eye is all the warning he gets, before he's swept up and around onto the bed. Dorian drops onto his back among the pillows, his breath lost.

He never quite regains it as Bull follows, sliding measuring fingers up along his body. "Yeah. You're pretty wound up as it is."

"Oh, and whose fault is that?" Dorian flicks a finger at Bull's chest, only to have Bull take his hand and set it against the bed.

"I'll take that blame. Let me take care of you a while, hmm?"

A part of Dorian starts into sobriety. Under the wryness, Bull is earnest, for lack of a better expression. Dorian grasps his fingers in wordless agreement, then lets himself slump back, both soothed and expectant.

Long moments pass like that; Bull studies him with unswaying focus. His mouth wanders down Dorian's curved-back throat and covers a nipple, his tongue swirling over it until it tightens. Dorian thumps an eloquent heel onto the bed, oh, several times, while Bull keeps up the maddening caress.

When Bull at last puts his mouth on the other nipple, Dorian sighs and arches up, an unequivocal offering. He might float a little, like there were a current tugging on him, loosely moored to his body. Bull strokes his hands under his hips, his arse, along the shaking lines of his thighs. The touch lights a leaping flame under his skin, gentle and consuming.

"Oh," he whispers at Bull's mouth against his throat. "Oh, that is..."

Lovely. Precarious. Transfixing.

He manages a few words of instruction when Bull murmurs a question. The shuffle of fabric, the rasp of a lid being unscrewed. Bull's finger, inside Dorian to the knuckle, draws the first quick drops of wetness from his aching cock.

"Could just get you off like this," Bull says, like musing on some abstract aspect, and presses down at the precise right angle to make Dorian's vision fleck with stars. It is so, so close to being enough.

" _Kaffas_ ," he begins, Common and Tevene snarling together. He seizes a pillow and pulls it onto his face to stifle his voice when Bull does it again.

"Fair's fair."

"I--I do not think--nnh--you know what that means."

"After what you did to me?" Bull circles his finger. Dorian whimpers at the indulgent stretch. "Just paying it back."

Then there is a second finger, and Bull's mouth on his ribs. His teeth nip at the reliefed contour of each in turn. Fumbling downwards, Dorian brushes his own cock, before Bull traps his hand to the bed above his head with a grunt of dry amusement. All the while, his fingers never stop their twisting and stroking.

Bull hovers above him. Dorian reaches out with his free hand. The tension in him is on the verge of snapping, and--

He catches hold of Bull's horn. Pulls.

Bull could resist; strength, leverage and focus are on his side. But he gives, comes to Dorian, yields his mouth to be kissed.

Dorian moans his release into the kiss, wet and askew and slaking a desire that barely conjoins the unspooling lust.

  


*

  


Gradually, like the slow moon glimpsed in the clearing sky, they rise. Conversation stirs. They sit half-naked on the rumpled bed and drink the last of the wine. They talk like people will talk when their walls are not smashed but willingly unbuilt, the topics drifting like the wind in the ruins on Seheron, or the docks and high gardens of Qarinus.

In time, the wine is gone, and sleep lays siege to their flickering glade of calm.

Dorian leaves Bull dozing on the bed, steals a tangled sheet and a pillow, and stretches himself out on the settee in the sitting room. Maybe he needs the distance, even in the hushed heart of the night. One of the lamps flows light across the room, too dim to disturb him.

  


*

  


He wakes with one leg kicked out over the side of the settee. It takes him a moment to remember why he traded away the perfectly comfortable bed. As he peers into the bedroom, the reason for it shifts so his horn sends a pillow tumbling to the floor.

It wouldn't be the first time Dorian's woken with Bull in his bed--after enough ale flows, who can be asked to remember who claimed which bunk? They've even shared time and again, inn cots pushed together or bedrolls tucked fast side by side so as not to freeze in the tent.

Today is a novelty, though.

A facile explanation knits itself together as Dorian finds some clothes and cleans his teeth and feels more composed for it. They did speak late, and surely it'd have been unkind to send Bull wandering through the palace corridors in the dead of night.

No matter that Bull has likely mapped them out better than Dorian himself. Old habits die hard.

He walks softly when he goes to the bed. Bull slits open his eye, too clear for Dorian to have woken him.

"Hey."

"Good morning." He plants a palm on the sheets to lean over Bull.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to steal your bed." Bull's hand comes up and, after the smallest waver, settles on Dorian's arm. A spark of truth: those fingers were in his mouth hours before, on his skin, inside him, heavy and reverent on his face afterwards.

It is morning, and the night is past.

"Consider it a loan. I may need it back soon, though."

"Yeah, sure." Bull grins, crooked, as if he's in on the joke. Of course he is: it wouldn't be the first discreet exit he's been asked to make, and this one is not only for Dorian's sake.

"Take your time." Before he's thought it through, he kisses the bridge of Bull's nose. A dry, gentle press of his mouth, followed by another over Bull's eye.

A precise and polite knock comes from the door. Dorian jumps, despite himself. Surely a servant or a messenger, and if he had a valet he wouldn't need to answer his own door. He'd also be at greater pains to explain the qunari lounging in his bed, which seems a wonderful place for him to be.

"I'll be back," he murmurs. Bull's hand falls from his shoulder, skimming his arm down to the wrist. When Dorian withdraws, tarrying, he only regrets the separation.

A tight-lipped woman in Inquisition livery stands at Dorian's door. She bows smartly at the waist, then holds out a sealed envelope. "Lord Pavus. I am to inform you that Seeker Pentaghast would like to speak with you."

When has Cassandra seen the need to ask for his time by such formal proxy? The likely answer is _never_ , but the messenger speaks on, "And, if it please my lord, Ambassador Montilyet sends her greetings. A reliable captain sails for Cumberland in a week's time, and your passage has been arranged. You'll find the details in here."

By the time he gets out a "thank you", she bows again and marches off down the hall.

Dorian leans against the door, the travel papers weighing his grip. It is morning, and the lamps have burned out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ain't dead, just going through some life upheavals.
> 
> Have a very definitely penultimate chapter. This fucker demanded to be split down the middle for reasons of drama, but the next one will be the last. I swear.
> 
> Shout-out to Katie and Toft for cheerleading and commentary. ♥ Not without you, as ever.

Years of association taught Dorian long ago where Cassandra is to be found at this hour, barring only the gravest disruptions to her routine. The palace chantry boasts a front garden, concealed by a stuccoed wall. He ducks through an archway and brushes past the climbing ivy that smothers the carved columns.

Out of habit, he touches his hair, his shirt cuffs, the laces of his vest. One of his oldest companions wished for a word. That's a favour he can grant.

The garden teems with dew in the morning haze. Dripping leaves and unfolding blossoms exude a cavalcade of damp, sweet smells. Cassandra stands up, her devotions done, and fixes him with an austere glance.

He mistook her briskness for anger the other day. This time, there's no margin of error. He squares himself.

"What can I do for you this fair morning, my friend?"

"Is that what I am?" Thunder broods in the line of her brows, but her voice hitches.

"Are you wearing a magister's robe or a marquis's mask?" Dorian crouches behind the retort as if it were a rampart, until he can measure the moment. "If not, then 'my friend' means exactly that."

"Do not mince words with me." She crosses her arms. Even in her linen shirt and sparring breeches--he arrived at the end of her private meditations--she looms. "I knew you could be callous, but I never took you for truly cruel."

Selfish, arrogant, short-sighted and vain. Such accusations Dorian has weathered all his life.

Now his mouth falls open before he can stop himself.

"I thought you understood the strain on him." Rue muddles her bright fury. "Maker's breath, I only hope he's been too pressed to notice."

"I _do_ understand, Cassandra. Why else do you imagine I've kept out of Joachim's way?" He shoves the name into the conversation like a bloody blade into its scabbard, knowing it will stick and crust.

It is no impediment to her.

"Bull," she says. Dorian makes a noise--disaffection is beyond him--and she takes that as condemning evidence. "You could not wait until the Council was over, until the eyes of two countries _and_ the Chantry were not on us all? Or how long has this been going on?"

"Do quell your penchant for dramatics." Dorian's voice returns, a rusty, strained thing. "I made it back from Tevinter scarcely two weeks ago."

Cassandra bristles. "You assume this entertains me. I am trying to preserve a friend with too much on his shoulders already. A friend whose burdens I've tried to bear all year. If there was something between you and Bull--"

 _How does she know? What has she heard?_ The palace is a hornet's nest of rumour and fabrication, every noble hungry for leverage over their rivals, every servant pricking their ears for gain or curiosity. The months in Tevinter sharpened Dorian's defences.

"Will it appease you--will you believe me?--if I say that I never breached my word to Joachim?" He breathes too hard. _Focus. Focus. Never admit to more than you must._ "I wasn't aware there was a mourning period for love affairs. He's free to seek his comforts elsewhere, and so am I."

"It has barely been a week, Dorian!"

"Our relationship was dead in the water for months!" Oh, that smarts. One can fold a matter shut, but sometimes that means it lies in wait until it can strike again.

"Is that the truth?" Standing straight, Cassandra can look him squarely in the eye. She's using that advantage to its fullest. "Or a lie you told yourself because you could not stay away from Tevinter?"

"I have a _duty_ ," Dorian grits through the pressure on his lungs.

"Greater than the Inquisitor's duty, I see."

"Are you his champion now? Is he so without defences that he can't speak to me on a matter as private as this?"

Joachim dealt with his lot as a disappointment of a second son by choosing a soldier's life. It was no grand rebellion, he used to say, more a deferral of hostilities. He can put on a stern aristocratic facade when he must, but with those he loves, he's always preferred softer ways.

Dorian knows this. It's oil to the pyre of his hurt.

"Do not," Cassandra says, a plea or a warning, but Dorian is past caring.

"I suppose the same should work for me. I should stay and be his left hand, his scandalous Tevinter paramour, and choose his cause over my own while--while my father's seat in the fucking Magisterium is snatched up by some imbecile only too happy to see the Imperium fall further to pieces!"

"Go on then!" Her colour has gone high and furious. She waves a sharp hand at the archway behind them. "Go, and leave this battle to us who at least care to fight it ourselves!"

"Maker's cock." Scalding tension holds Dorian still, like he were poured copper inside a plaster mould. "Which is it you're questioning, my honour or my fidelity? Both are, as a matter of fact, beyond your judgment, _Seeker_ Pentaghast."

If the archway had a gate he'd slam it behind him. He walks stiff-spined across the palace grounds to his empty rooms, where the servants have opened the windows and stripped the linens from the bed. The chess board, marking the abandoned game, stands untouched in the sitting room.

He sweeps the pieces off the table and listens to them clink and roll on the marble floor.

  


*

  


The departure of the _Moira's Fortune_ for Cumberland sets an ending point to Dorian's time in Halamshiral. Four days hence he must be on horseback, preferably at the break of day.

He could leave now, he thinks sourly, in the solitude of his quarters. The things that brought him back-- _truly_ brought him back, beyond the backhanded glory of an ambassadorial appointment--are clearly a shambles ready to fall.

He gives himself half an hour and a too-early swig of cloying Orlesian brandy to dwell on the idea. Then, buoyed by the brandy and rancid pride in equal measure, he goes to his desk. Another sealed envelope has appeared on the corner while he was away.

It isn't a signet he knows. That's a comfort of sorts. The curlicued courtesies of people who only wish to profit from him provide an escape. Yes, he should be able to forward Marquis Gauchier's letters to the vintners' guild in Vol Dorma. No, he can't solve Lady Mahault's dilemma of which bored altus in Asariel is a regular contributor to the _Randy Dowager Quarterly_ , but if she ever finds out, he'd be delighted to hear the results. For purposes of blackmail and personal amusement.

_Leave this battle to us._

Two years of fighting beside Cassandra count for nothing, then? Her plan to rebuild the Seekers is _not_ taking away from the Inquisition's cause?

What authority does she have to condemn where and how Dorian chooses to spend his nights?

Dorian rubs the heel of his palm into his eye socket until it leaves patches of darkness pulsing in his vision, and starts another letter.

  


*

  


The next day stretches out towards its evening. Dorian surfaces from a stupor of diplomacy, insomnia and somewhat too much wine when Sera bats aside his inkwell, plunks herself down in the middle of his desk, and crosses her ankles over his latest sheet of scratch paper. Grass and mud decorate her bare, calloused toes.

"I suppose I should be grateful to be treated to the sight of your feet instead of your arse." Dorian looks up to find her face, merry under the kerchief tied on her head. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Peach," she says, flipping a fruit into the air. "Catch!"

He's not best poised for feats of dexterity, but a hasty reach to the side secures the ripe peach in his fingers before it splatters his papers.

"Oh, good. You just _look_ like you've become one of those wall-staring holy people, whatcha call them? Mucky 'Vint word."

" _Miratores_ ," Dorian supplies. "They--"

"Yeah, yeah, spread from Tevinter a couple hundred years after they burned Andraste. Most people think they're touched, and not by the Maker."

"You're making a habit of this scholarly one-upmanship."

"No. I'm bringing you a peach." Sera bites into another one, procured from a belt pouch. "This is where you say thanks. 'So kind of you, Sera, I haven't seen the sun in days, I'm too busy faffing about with crusty nobles.' "

"That almost sounded like me, and then you said 'faff'." The peach is tart and perfect, dripping juice onto his chin.

"Pike off. What's with you, trying to steal the title of Lord Broodybritches from Thom?"

Dorian wipes at his jaw, then eats the other half of the peach. "Where did you get these specimens? As I recall, the fruit stalls at the market were an utter letdown."

"Tiny walled garden at the south end here. Had to climb a trellis."

"Of course." His cheek twitches with the untimely urge to smile. "What are a few stolen pieces of imperial fruit between friends?"

"Between you and me, you arse." Sera pokes his arm with her grassy toes. "Friends, right?"

"Certainly," Dorian murmurs, and accepts a second peach from the Empress's private orchard from Sera's outstretched hand. "We'll burn the pits when we're done eating."

  


*

  


Now and then a peach seed pops in the fireplace. Sera dangles her arms over one armrest of a chair, her feet over the other, curved into the seat. Dorian's own spine was never that forgiving.

"Ready to tell me what crawled up your bum and died there?" Her tone is as conversational as she can physically manage.

"I have been _busy_. A concept I'm sure you can grasp, even with a lack of applying it in practice."

"You missed cards. Three nights in a row."

"So you had to miss them in solidarity." It's been an unspoken rule these past weeks that after the evening bell, those of their company who can, meet at the Gilded Horn. No one makes it every night, but in truth, Dorian would note his own absence after that long.

"So I put an ear to the ground," she says. "Curious?"

"You will tell me whether I wish it or not."

"Hnngh, quit being a wet rag! I went and _examined the facts_. Working up to a proper frigging unveiling here."

Dorian groans surrender, and Sera raises a finger. "One, you took a vow of silence. Nobody's talked to you in two days. Two, Cassandra's not talking to Bull. Missed their morning spar. Three, Bull's not talking about that. Or you. _That_ is weird."

"Am I to understand I've been a favoured topic in my absence?" Oh no, no, no. Don't _ask_. Divert. Deflect. Change the subject.

Somehow Sera manages to shrug through her prodigious slouch. "He's a mother hen, that one. Watches over everyone."

"Of course," Dorian says, feeling ill and relieved all at once.

"You, though. Always in the corner of his eye."

"One tries to be memorable." Dorian thumbs at a tiny cut on the joint of his forefinger with unwarranted industry. Maker's sake, he can scarcely tell which way is up anymore. If what Sera is saying indeed adds up to what he thinks it does...

If Sera is serious. If she isn't simply spinning the tangle of Dorian's gossamer hopes and fears into a web of ridicule.

"And the best part," she says with a flourish. " _Somebody_ drank a bottle of the fanciest, elfiest wine this side of the Frostbacks in this room. A bottle that somebody sure as frig did not buy himself."

"It was a joint effort."

"Oh, I bet it was!" She crows a laugh, rude and delighted. "Rutting wonder that your bed's still standing."

Slowly Dorian slides deeper into the chair, until his posture is a passable mimicry of hers. "Have you come to offer your opinion on the affairs of my heart, as well?"

"More like the affairs of your groin."

"Every part of me regrets them right now, so you may take your pick."

"What, because somebody's got a gob of gossip over who you're jousting or not?"

"I almost preferred Cassandra's righteous fury," Dorian mutters. His relationship with Joachim remained no great secret, only discreet enough to thwart the worst of the rumours, especially those running northward. Of course its current fate would be a topic of speculation among the attendees of the Council.

"Did she make her judgy face at you?" Sera imitates said expression, jutting out her chin. "Look, it's like this. You're covering your lead. She's out there taking hits, so anything moves on her, it gets an arrow. Thwack!"

"Mm-hm."

"Then bam! Here's some magic-waving ponce, raining fire on everything in sight. She gets singed, and you draw and put an arrow in the prick that did it." Ignoring Dorian's cocked eyebrow, she concludes, "Only then you see, well shite, it was one of your own pricks. Figurative ones. Your side. But you weren't thinking that. You had to cover your lead."

"In this allegory, Joachim is Cassandra, Cassandra is you, and I remain myself, I take it."

"See? I made it simple for you."

 _Two days_ , he tells himself, _and after that there's no guarantee when you'll see these people again._ His people. He doesn't think that the answer might be _not in this life_.

"Indeed," he says aloud. "Shall we see if any of the others are still at the tavern?"

"Thought you'd never frigging ask."

Sera bounds to her feet from the chair, and Dorian grips his misgivings, feels them writhe, and casts them aside he stands to follow her.

  


*

  


"Long night, darling?" Vivienne inquires as she watches a tremulous servant pour her an exact measure of ink-black coffee. They sit on her balcony again, the sun already high overhead.

Dorian, who spent a while pressing magic-chilled fingers to his eyes to hide the dark marks of too little sleep, smiles airily at her. "I'm making the most of your impeccable hospitality before I must away."

The hour is late for the Divine's breakfast, but the invitation came just as Dorian had stirred and begun to wonder if he felt up to eating. This once, one might not split a gifted loaf of bread looking for nails.

One presumes, then, that one has a friend in the inviting party.

"And how goes the hunt for the aspiring author behind the Tevene _nom de plume_?"

"If you know something, Most Holy, you'll have one soon-to-be-minted magister in your debt."

The rest of the breakfast dishes materialise on the sweep-legged rosewood table. The serving staff withdraws, and once alone, they eat and speak of buoyant things, as one does at breakfast, in Orlais. Dorian appreciates the moment to collect his waking thoughts.

The card game and accompanying alcohol are answerable for only about half of his poor sleep. He sat with Varric, Cole, Sera and Blackwall--Warden Rainier, now, he should remember--lost repeatedly at the Hand of Rat Red, and practiced his evil magister laugh for Sera. Of the other absentees, there was one that left a palpable empty space.

"I presume Magister Pavus has a mind to cultivate his southern contacts even from Minrathous." An imperative disguised as a suggestion. The last of the fruit plate may sit between them, but that line also brings breakfast to a close.

"I can't very well wreck my maverick reputation now, can I?" Dorian says. "It's in my history. House Pavus has not lacked for revolutionist sentiments."

"Leverage the resources you have." She tilts back in the chair whose hue matches the table precisely. "When you have, you might send me the names of a few trustworthy couriers, if such stock can be found in Tevinter."

"Such slander, and it isn't yet noon." The midday bell will sound soon. In the back of his head, Dorian is ever aware of the shortening hours.

He tugs his sleeve straight and lets his fingers skim the weight against his ribs. He acquired the sending crystals at extravagant cost: the art of their making is known to few and rigorously guarded.

"That'd give the idle tongues in Minrathous something to wag about," he goes on. "A magister of the hallowed Magisterium, in cohorts with the White Divine."

"No need to be coy," she says. "I'm sure they are wagging already. We shall exchange pleasantries for their amusement. Discuss the fashions, mock each other's choices in the same."

"Find surprising common ground in our loathing of the Antivans. Certain lovely ambassadors perhaps excepted."

This is an improvement. Better to trade banter with Vivienne in the clear light of day than to pace half-drunk in his rooms, trying to decide if it would be mad or inspired to seek out further company, in the dead of night.

Bull was not at the tavern. Dorian had braced himself for the meeting, even hoped for it. What business did Bull have in the palace that eclipsed cards and cider at sundown? The Chargers had been released into Halamshiral to ease the pressure of imperial guards, noble house militias, templars and various hired swords all vying for the same training grounds and entertainments at the palace proper. Bull, though, had stayed, for the Inquisitor's benefit.

It might've been better had he gone down to the city, outside Dorian's immediate, frustrated reach. Would the distance quell the fumbling urge to find him?

Dorian thought bedding him could be a clean, simple thing. Two old companions lending a mutual hand.

Whose was the benefit in the end? There is Joachim, as of yet unaware, a spot of raw hurt in Dorian's mind. Bull, always willing, never demanding. And Dorian himself, thinking he knows where his allegiances lie even as his affections knot upon themselves.

A lacy trail of fresh steam is rising from his cup. With a chink of porcelain, Vivienne sets the coffee pot down. "You are miles away, my dear."

"I--" There, a true test of friendship. Dorian spoons sugar into his coffee and lets her see that he needs the diversion.

Soon those proverbial miles will become real ones. It was with them in mind that he hunted down the sending crystals: dwarven-crafted, Tevinter-enchanted. A way to string a connecting thread across the distance.

It didn't take a blade to sever it. It only took a word.

That word set Cassandra at his throat in a fit of protective pique, sent the rest of their company tiptoeing around him and Joachim, pushed him towards Bull's bed.

 _Towards_ , not _into_. Dorian tries not to let others take the credit for his missteps.

"I have something I thought to leave here." He looks up at Vivienne. She meets his gaze in full.

Her eyes widen, a scant show of leaping surprise, when he uncovers the crystals. The silverite chains and frames scatter the sunlight to play across the tableware.

"These are a linked pair." The Fade wafts briefly as she probes the crystals with a twinge of magic. "Extraordinary."

He hesitates. Presses forward.

"Would the Divine accept this, in the absence of reliable Tevinter messengers?"

Vivienne is both sly and bold. He spars with her often, in political views and in _bons mots_ , but he'd hang a great deal on the trust between them.

She picks up a crystal by its chain. It shimmers opalescent. "You did not mean one of these for me."

"Don't worry," Dorian says, arid. "I do not expect romantic repartee to enliven my evenings. It'd be a waste of a towering bribe to take them back with me--and I'd value a quicker way to get word to you." _You all_ is the intimation.

"Utility, if not sentiment." She cups the crystal in her palm.

"I hold you in unparalleled esteem, madame." He crooks his mouth. "What other reason might I have to leave this with you, out of all our fine company?"

"Sentiment," she says, in echo and in reply. "You dare not trust it to the Inquisitor any more."

" _Fasta vass_." He sighs, his breezy glide interrupted. "I trust him. He simply chose not to extend our relationship, and in light of that--"

Here, their liaison could weather the light of day. It could thrive there. Not too long ago, Dorian thought that surely love needed no more than that. If it could even grow in the thick shadows of Tevinter tradition, what could kill it in these much gentler airs?

"My dear." Vivienne reaches for his hand, turns it palm up, and lays the crystal there. "Love, too, is a bargain. It's not made false by the fact that you must weigh it like any other thing you want."

"What would you know of that?" he says, belligerent at once. _You hung at the elbow of a married man and used his status to elevate yourself._

He's seen her cow grown men with nothing but a sideward glance. If Cassandra's vexation rather resembled a cloudburst, Vivienne's is kin to the early-spring shear of a falling icicle. She draws straight in her seat.

His thought never becomes words. He remembers a letter she wrote to an associate in Tevinter, refusing to give credence to rumours of Dorian's disreputable personal affairs.

"That was unbecoming of me." Hushed now, his voice. She could drag any number of barbs into the conversation, and his romantic woes would only be the first target.

Her chin dips a fraction, an elegant cant of annoyance, and Dorian averts his eyes.

"Chantry law forbade mages from marrying." By the sound of her voice he knows she, too, is looking away. "Bastien, of course, had a duty to wed. He had been promised to Nicoline when he was fifteen. So we, three civilised people tossed by circumstance, discussed it together."

Even chastised, he has to huff at that. "I'm not so callow as to not understand the concept of the _ménage à trois_."

"The concept is always straightforward." Vivienne has elected to leave her displeasure at a low simmer. " 'Love' is a concept. 'Forever' is an concept. Ideas did not make us happy for twenty years."

He breathes, in, out. She wants him to ask.

Well. He's never lacked for imprudent courage.

"What did, then?"

If her next action were to freeze him solid in his chair, he might've earned it for his presumption. Steam still curls from his cup, dispersing into the air.

"I will not speak for them." When Dorian sneaks a glimpse at Vivienne, her hands lie, fingers together, on the delicate armrests of the chair. "It pleased me to debate politics over breakfast with Bastien. To plan soirées with Nicoline. She had the most remarkable eye for colour. She painted me once." A smile winds into her voice, unseen, only heard. "On occasion, it made me happy to take to the dance floor first in his arms, then in hers."

Allowing a sigh to swell from his chest, Dorian studies the tabletop. _You humble me._ Another thing he could never say to her out loud. The edge of the crystal's frame presses into the flesh of his hand.

"That was love, as I found it," she says, with a soft note of finality.

A small silence. She doesn't rush him. The Divine of the Andrastians, granting him her time.

 _That was love._ So was, Dorian knows, the heady, reckless, steadfast thing that twined in between him and Joachim. A wartime romance, a refuge for two people who did not know if they could ever go home.

"I cannot." His fingers clench around the warmed weight of the crystal. "I can't have him as my one link back here. Not right now."

Maybe, with time, the emotion can be tempered and cooled into something that'll withstand the distance. Now, even the thought of it aches.

"I'll make you a bargain." Her expression dances, a rare instance of animation. "When you're leaving, come see me. If you offer this to me again then, I'll accept it."

He finds a smile, wistful and weary, to give her in answer. "That is it?"

"I do have a further condition." She shifts, and he hurries to rise first. He has to covertly grab the armrest when she specifies, "You will speak to the Iron Bull before you go."


	4. Chapter 4

"Again!"

In sharp barks, the shouts of the two combatants crest the clatter of their practice shields and weapons. The whispering boughs of the oak grove obscure the noises, but they grow more distinct as Dorian approaches the clearing.

"Again! You must angle yourself behind the shield. It's the only thing between you and my blade."

"Maker's mercy, that's the one thing I've learned today." Joachim laughs, and something thumps to the ground. Cassandra's answering chortle has an almost rascally undertone.

The sun drives the shadows to the east, cooling the air after a dense, humid day. Dorian was put on the trail of the sparring twosome by Sera, who'd seen them slip out of a side gate and into the treeline of the imperial hunting grounds.

He can't claim he enjoys the prospect of taking them on together. With half a day left before he must leave, he can hardly get particular about his confrontations.

_You could always simply go. As it is done in Tevinter._

The thought is tinged with bile.

Whatever else, he will be better than that.

His boots squelching through the loamy path, he steps out from under the covering trees. Joachim's roan gelding, tethered at the edge of the clearing together with Cassandra's mare, whinnies and nudges Dorian's arm.

"Hello, old fellow." He spares the horse the moment that it takes Joachim and Cassandra to register his voice. They turn nearly as one, Cassandra's wooden sword raised in readiness, Joachim's waterskin spouting to the ground before he rights it. Water trickles from his chin.

"Ah." His expression clouds from the easy amusement at his own defeat.

"Peace, if you'd be so gracious," Dorian says, aimed at Cassandra, who thankfully slackens her stance.

"What do you want?" Correction: she shifted her animosity into her voice.

"First, to not be bludgeoned to an ignominious death by your armament." Dorian raises his hands, palms forward. "Second, a word with the Inquisitor."

Hurt flickers on Joachim's face, quick as a stray spark. "Cassandra? Would you give us a moment? We can continue after that."

"As you wish." She strides past Dorian to free the horses' tethers. "I'll take them to the stream."

Once the last flash of the horses' flanks has vanished into the greenery, Joachim crouches to put the practice weapons in a tidy pile. A leather bracer tightens his left shirt-sleeve to his forearm: a carved wooden arm, with articulated wrist and finger joints that can be flexed and straightened by means of fine metal bolts.

It is no dwarven artifice, but some carpenter--several carpenters working in tandem, judging by the speed of construction--should be proud of their craft.

" 'The Inquisitor'?" Joachim's eyes are achingly green in this light. Dorian would rather not contemplate that.

"If I'd dared say anything more familiar, she'd have stabbed me in an inconvenient internal organ."

" _She_ at least talks to me."

"She employs secret Seeker arts to locate you, I suspect," Dorian says, involuntarily sharp. He's here to make peace, not rouse further rancour. _Keep to the task._ "I had to ask a Jenny, and even then it was a near thing."

"Sorry." A hint of that disarming grin that got to Dorian in the first place. "I did beg her to rescue me today, actually. I don't know how Josephine does it, day in and day out."

"Ancient Antivan disciplines, and plenty of unwatered wine."

"It sounds like everyone's hoarding knowledge I'm just not privy to." Joachim twists a bolt, uncurls the forefinger of his artificial hand, and locks it in place. In spite of himself, Dorian leans in to see. "That's a pretty good description of the Council at large."

"Certainly." A half-sunken log lies at one end of the clearing, patched with moss. Dorian gestures at it, and Joachim follows him so they can sit.

"All right." The trouble with Joachim is this: He apologises and forgives with equal facility. He bears next to no grudges, and he doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. Dorian was perhaps doomed to either love him or try to smother him in his sleep. "What's on your mind? You can still talk to me, you know."

No way to circumvent.

"I'm leaving tomorrow." It breaks from Dorian like a bone shard from an inflamed wound. "If I hurry, I can be in Qarinus before the mourning month is over."

"Josephine said," Joachim begins, but it is a complete sentence. "I wondered if you would come to say goodbye."

"You couldn't come yourself?" If this is the extent of Dorian's restraint, the high circles of Minrathous will eat him alive. "You knew where I could be found. And I've staged a few vanishing acts in my day."

"I remember." A hoarse chortle. "Dorian--I left you. I can argue my reasons to myself, but I did. That doesn't leave me much right to your time."

 _One could argue I left you first._ "It's been my understanding that giving the other party a berth is the politic thing to do. Time, perspective, all that sage nonsense."

"That makes you just about the most considerate jilted lover I've ever had." Joachim may seem mild, but once you get to know him, he's candid as a Denerim fishwife. "I, uh, expected a little more fire and brimstone."

"I can torch a tree if you wish. The smoke might choke us, though." _I also fucked one of our close mutual friends. Repeatedly. With more feeling than might've been needed for catharsis._

"Something is. Choking us, I mean." Joachim sighs, a grudging sound. "There was a way we used to talk."

Contrary to appearances, Dorian has some idea of how to turn former lovers into friends again: the Tevinter sense of friends, as in moderately engaging, potentially useful people who know the revelation of your indiscreet entanglement would threaten both of you.

He can't imagine Joachim harming him in any conscious way.

"You'll be coming north, I expect," he says instead. "I left some names with Leliana. Her cipherers gave me a new key to use."

"And you'll write?" Joachim sounds more than a little sardonic.

"Whenever I can."

"Is this a farewell or a report?" The clumsy way Joachim crosses his arms blunts the gesture: the wooden limb is trapped askew under his right arm. A defence, all the same.

Right then Dorian wants to be angry: to burst forth like a fire pot and shout that had they kept on, they'd have bent each other out of shape, forever reaching across a gap that couldn't be closed. He has Tevinter. Joachim has the Inquisition. He can't ask Joachim to come; Joachim wants him to stay.

This is not the last parting he must handle today.

 _You, though_ , Sera said, seemingly off-hand. _Always in the corner of his eye._

Bull had gone to Halamshiral for the day, and would be back around sundown. Dorian would do best to conquer the rise he is on now before considering the one looming beyond.

"You were good to me," he says. _Better than I deserved at times. Don't say that. Maker, grant me the grace to do this one thing right._ "I will always remember that."

"If you consider hauling you along on one mad caper after another as a good thing, then that's true." Joachim looks down to hide a smile.

" _Amice mi_ ", Dorian chides, in Tevene, which Joachim speaks enough for that, "do shed the false modesty. We are a little beyond that, no?"

His mouth twisting, though not unhappily, Joachim loosens his arms and touches Dorian's elbow. "Then I'd part as friends. Even if we have to take our time actually getting there."

Dorian leans into the hug, his palms firm on the sweat-damp, thin-woven texture of Joachim's shirt. Another thing Joachim taught him: how to be close for its own sake. The embrace proves nothing, challenges nothing. It only is, because he wants to hold a friend for a moment while he can.

He'll have this moment, and go with his secrets tucked safe under his heart.

"The Maker walk with you," Joachim says as they withdraw. They both laugh and shake their heads, wry over the irony of that wish.

Dorian leaves him in the clearing, the last light of the day all around him.

  


*

  


He returns to the palace grounds to be swept up in further rituals of leavetaking. He wrote his final letters earlier today and stuffed the unanswered ones in his saddlebag for later scrutiny.

With difficulty, he dissuades Sera from the notion that getting shitfaced at the tavern is a canny move before a looming day of hard riding. They toast their future reunion with sticky-sweet apricot brandy. She clings to him with bony, huffy affection as they hug at the tavern front. 

He trades a few soft words with Cole, grasps arms with Rainier, suffers Varric clapping him on the back and threatening him with a cameo in his next opus. Josephine kisses him on both cheeks, Cullen clasps his wrist in a steady grip and wishes him safe travels. Leliana is absent on some errand of subterfuge, but on his desk appears a small rose-and-ginger cake decorated with a spun-sugar raven.

The cake is exquisite. He makes a request for an answer of the palace kitchens.

Then, irrevocably, only three more farewells and a night's sleep remain. One farewell he's unlikely to achieve, with Cassandra in her high dudgeon. He sent Vivienne an inquiry and the reply came that she'd make time for him after the dawn prayers. That leaves the third.

Dorian sits slumped against a corner of the cleaned desk, dangling one of the sending crystals and trying to pierce its conundrum, when someone knocks.

Four paced, even knocks.

"It's open," he calls. A habit of caution makes him shove the crystal back into its pouch. A belated messenger maybe, or someone coming back to mention an overlooked detail.

Bull stands in the doorway.

Dorian springs onto his feet. The smells of leather and horse surround Bull, though not strong, as if he'd made an effort at ablutions. His eye finds Dorian's own. The look there is--not lost, not haunted, but he searches Dorian's face for a long moment.

 _I was thinking, not stalling_ , he almost pleads. _I needed to know what to say to you._

"There's something you ought to see," Bull says. His tone is another conundrum.

Dorian follows him out of the room.

  


*

  


Skyhold's towers dwarf the heights of any lowland fastness, but the view from the roof of the Winter Palace is no mean contender. In the west are the dwindling shades of nightfall, and in the east the greater moon rises circled in cloud, its full disc a dusty scarlet.

Inside the line of columns that hem the eastern gallery, a guard paces from one sparsely set lantern to another. The gallery itself affords them some privacy. Its white marble has gone dun and purple in the reddened light.

"I thought it'd be next month." Dorian peers at the eclipsed moon. "It's been too long since I even glanced at an almanac."

Bull stops by the marble banister, holding himself at his full height. They climbed the stairs in silence. Dorian keeps crossing out one baleful mood after another that Bull might be in: he is quiet, but it is a quiet that allows for Dorian, takes him in and enfolds him.

_Where were you two nights ago?_

"They'll be talking about it in Qunandar." Bull's maimed hand rests on the railing, slack and empty.

"About the eclipse? If even Orlesian astronomers can measure it, why would the Qunari..."

"The Orlesians mostly suck at it. They use Tevinter tables. That you probably stole from some ashkaari in Seheron."

Dorian concedes with a tip of his head that this is not his corner of expertise.

"Likely not the same unlucky sod that's got to tell the Ariqun that the eclipse has shit to do with the Viddasala screwing the nug."

"Have you been talking to Varric?" As candid as Bull is, in this context the turn of phrase verges on the crass.

"She fucked up. There's some in the priesthood who'll wanna tie any old omen to the mess she left. Even when they know exactly why and when the moon goes red."

"You... will have to enlighten me some time." Dorian isn't ashamed to admit that Qunari science is leaps and bounds beyond Tevinter accomplishments in the mundane disciplines. "There's a hot ideological debate brewing in Qunandar, you say."

"The Ariqun's the conservative kind. Steps on the necks of the ashkaari every chance she gets." Bull waves his hand upwards. "So that's not the planet's shadow crossing the big moon." Dorian nods at that; it's not the time to ask further. "That's the hand of Koslun, come to slap the Ben-Hassrath upside the head for prying into suspicious elven crap."

"Ah. I thought your peop--the Qunari--were beyond such mysticism." Dorian curses himself the instant that _your_ drops from his lips, and redoubles his mental castigation when Bull's shoulders slump, his weight coming to rest on his hand on the banister.

"You know," Bull says. "The _hissra-kaar_ \--the veiled moon, if you wanna get poetic--is a sign of change. I look at it and I know what it _really_ is, but there's that weight. All the stories you were told, when you were small and dumb."

Scoffing mildly, Dorian sets his hip against the railing. "I have trouble picturing you as either."

He thinks he has the emotion that darkens Bull's visage. It's resignation.

Bull stands close enough for Dorian to touch and yet so distant he would not dare. A hand on his arm might not span that abyss.

"I meant to come find you." That's the plain truth, however softly Dorian speaks it. "You pre-empted me. Was this what you wanted me to see?"

"Maybe." A heavy shrug. "Maybe just me."

The word peals in Dorian's chest like a chime, drowning out the sombre tenor of the moment. All the questions he yearns to ask wake in its echoes.

_Have you been watching me?_

He can't go there yet. He isn't done here.

"Bull," he says, wishing he had Varric's eloquence, Josephine's intuition, whatever merit that could help him make this, too, be true. "That door the Viddasala held open was already shut. There wasn't a home on the other side."

It is no use appealing to Bull's integrity, which Dorian knows to be solid as a mountain. He is in the snare of more muddled sentiments.

Honour is a poor cure when the sickness is not shame, but sorrow.

"Still feels like I failed." Bull hunches towards the sheer drop over the banister. "This is the only place for me, yeah. For a blink back there, I let down my own people when they needed me."

"You did _not_ ," Dorian snaps, his throat thick. 

"There was a man would've obeyed her without second thought. I was that man once."

"You did not abandon your people." Half-aware of his own movement, Dorian leans towards Bull. His bare hands shift on the marble. "We needed you, and you stood with us."

 _We are your people now._ Can Dorian lay such claim to Bull? What are they two to each other? Too tangled for friends, too brittle for lovers. _I don't even know what you think of me now._

He does not know. He only wants. It beats in him like spring water at a lid of ice.

"You're leaving." The singular is clear. Bull speaks it hoarsely.

Dorian's heart jolts. How much that must matter to Bull that he should say it outright--not like an accusation but like a cause for heartbreak. He nearly opens his mouth with a platitude about his duties, about letters or misty reunions down the months.

"I have until dawn," he says. "Every hour is yours."

The lines of Bull's face tense, then fall. His fingers find Dorian's shoulder and drag him in with a strength unneeded for how easily Dorian goes.

They collapse into each other like the banks of a flooding ravine: the first kiss is a mess of teeth and unspent yearning, Bull's head held in Dorian's grip, all of Dorian in his.

  


*

  


They get as far as the sumptuous carpet of Nevarran wool inside the door, which Dorian locks with a hurried twist of his hand. Clothes loosened, boots barely toed off, both of them fumbling with laces and buckles.

"I had," Dorian confesses between gasping kisses, "a longer speech planned."

Even the hum Bull makes holds a ragged edge. His hand slides under Dorian's layered attire, coming apart with alacrity that'd amuse Dorian in another moment. They've laughed and scuffled in bed, egged each other on and been sidetracked by atrocious repartee.

This is nothing like it.

"Well," he breathes against Bull's throat. "No deathless diction, it was. I made the salient points."

Bull's teeth leave wet, throbbing half-moons bit into his shoulder. He bucks into Bull's hand that's prying his cock out of his rumpled breeches, and straddles Bull's broad thigh as Bull strokes him roughly.

  


*

  


A hasty, shaky fuck on the floor. Every span of skin that Dorian can get against Bull's seems afire, hands and mouths alone too much. Bull's fingers gouge bruises into his hip. He comes shivering against Bull, hands wide on his chest, both of them soaked in unnamed need.

Weariness is an abstract; their raw, breathless communion a reality. Dorian promised his time, knowing it was the only thing he had.

What does he have to give to Bull? His body and his pleasure, his voice and his nearness. _Were you sweet on me?_ he wonders, with Bull resting awkwardly back on the carpet and his cock hard and jerking under Dorian's tongue. Dorian casts himself into the pace of their making.

It is hardly love that they make. Still, it is an act that builds something: trust, comfort, an indelible moment.

Afterwards, they disrobe the rest of the way, raid the wine cabinet in the front room, fumble for words. Dorian stops with a goblet of watered wine in his hand when Bull steps up to him. Absurdly, achingly, they linger, Dorian's temple pressed to Bull's scarred left cheek.

  


*

  


Sleep, by sticky handfuls, as the moon swims out of the shadow of the world. Dorian wakes to the impulse to ask about that morsel of knowledge, nestled into Bull's side in his bed. The light outside is slipping from rust to silver again.

"Heard a curious rumour in the kitchens." Bull ruffles a hand through Dorian's hair.

"You did?" They may be on a meandering curve back towards conversation. Of course Bull has used their weeks here to endear himself to the palace staff. Surprise hardly occurs to Dorian.

"Something 'bout a delivery to Red. Topped with a bird squashed by a book?" Dorian catches a glimpse of merriment in Bull's drowsy eye.

"You need to ask, after the unholy cawing from the rookery I endured for years? I thought I'd give the confectioner a challenge."

A sound suspiciously like laughter. "Hope you paid the poor bastard that takes it to her so much he can retire in the Anderfels."

"Such perjury, to even intimate I did not. I'm not entirely heartless." _Only enough to leave._ Dorian smothers his own remorse.

They lie on top of the sheets in the warm midnight. Dorian stretches up to meet Bull's gaze in full, steals a kiss without particular thought, and says, "Tell me about this business with the eclipse."

Bull ponders that for long enough that Dorian is pricked by the fear that he's misstepped again. Then Bull begins, "One of the tamassrans that taught me, she used to be an ashkaari. A scholar. She drew all this shit for us in the sand. The sun, the moons, the planet."

He looks about, and Dorian slides the rings from his fingers and pours them in Bull's palm. "Show me."

So Bull lays his golden signet ring in the middle of the bed, the thick ambassadorial band to its right, two simple silver rings close around that. Under the wavering spell wisp Dorian summons, he talks low about the motions of celestial objects: the world around the sun, the moons around the world. Wonders that stem not from the Fade, but from stringent observation. The eclipses are as predictable as daybreak, when one has the right learning and the right instruments.

"Again and again," Dorian murmurs, drawing one silver ring around his ambassador's ring along the sheet. "There is a comfort of sorts in that."

"I like it," Bull says, languid. "Something that won't change. You just have to wait for it to come around."

  


*

  


Closer to dawn, its first dim blue creeping across the bed, Bull holds Dorian to the mattress and teases him to the brink of his suffering. Not with intent, but with care: his hands on every tender dip and hollow, his mouth hot on Dorian's. His cock slides slow between Dorian's open, tensing legs.

"Bull," Dorian insists, fraying. "Just have me. Have me this once."

Bull sighs. Kisses Dorian with unbearable attention, like he were the only real thing Bull knows. "No. Not this time."

And it is only when Dorian catches his breath later, his hands trembling on Bull's horns and Bull's face against his heaving chest, that he understands.

_Not this time. When you come back._

  


*

  


His courage carries him through a half-hearted washing and a sorting through their scattered clothes. He can't bear to eat, but he drinks at least, at Bull poking a goblet of water into his hands.

Then, there he is. Boots, gloves, cloak in case it rains. A fleet-footed servant ducks into the room and takes his bags nearly without his notice.

Bull, dressed and straightened out about as well as Dorian himself, opens his arms with a frankness that nearly undoes Dorian. "All right. Come here."

 _I could have this._ Not that he knows how in the world he would keep it, except by forsaking every demand upon him, turning his back on Maevaris and his mother, but the certainty of the thought is irrefutable.

"I will stay right here," he says into the hollow of Bull's shoulder. "I'll miss my ship and whatever retinue my mother has sent will wait in vain."

Bull winds an arm around Dorian's shoulders. "You don't mean that."

If they could only tarry like this, bodies curved into one another on the threshold. A sealed whole, a scale in balance.

"Make me go."

Bull gives a jerky shake of his head. "No."

"This--it could never last. We both knew that. So make me go."

"No, fire-spitter." Bull's timbre sounds as heavy as Dorian's limbs seem. "I'm not gonna hurt you like that. We gave each other a good thing. Let it stay that way."

Dorian's hands clench into fists, then spread across Bull's skin. There, the line of his clavicle, the texture of an old burn, the flux of his breaths. How to engrave all this in himself, to take it along?

He tucks a hand into his vest and withdraws the weight he's carried there. Nearly knotting the chain in his fingers, he hands one of the sending crystals to Bull. His voice cracks on the explanation, but Bull listens, both their eyes on their clasped hands, cradling the crystal.

"Take it," Dorian says. "I will be in Trevis some time before First Day. If you reconsider, you can return it to me then."

Bull tugs a square of clean soft leather from his belt pouch, folds the crystal in it, and puts it carefully back. The motions are sure and steady.

"I'm keeping Her Holiness waiting." Dorian smiles a little.

"Can't have that," Bull says. "See you, Dorian."

_You will, you will, you will._

They kiss in the doorway, in quiet goodbye.

  


*

  


Vivienne takes a look at Dorian's face, smiles scantly, and says nothing. She holds his hands for a moment, then sends him from her parlour with a peck on his temple. He bows to her, airy as you please, before turning to go.

His horse is waiting, brushed, fed and saddled. He checks the sack of oats and his own provisions once more: the food must last them both until Jader. Then, finally, he reaches for his staff to set it in the saddle mount, only to have it held out towards him from where he left it by the wall.

"Seeker," he says, grasping the staff below Cassandra's grip. It ripples with subtle magic at his touch, attuned as it is to him. "Come to put a final boot in my arse?"

He can see the quick, scathing reply sharpen her mouth before she swallows it. "Perhaps I deserved that."

Dorian focuses on slipping the staff into the rounded iron rings of the mount. "You must admit it's been a refrain in our meetings of late."

"I know. I've been reminded of it from multiple quarters."

For a second, he weighs how much of the anger he cares to nurse. Sera shaved off its worst points. "If you hadn't, would you be here?"

"You enjoy making this difficult." Cassandra raises her chin. She does have a singular capacity to be remorseful and vexed at once. "I mean that I was... I was wrong. I had no right to judge you."

The horse stamps at the dirt, as if bemused by the delay. Dorian strokes her neck with an absent hand. "In that you are right." He makes himself go on. "However, I'm not quite blameless either. Even if my crime is a lack of tact rather than fidelity."

Her eyebrow curves in some degree of astonishment.

"Pray think no more of it," he says, aware of his dearth of time and her preference for brevity. "You were... covering your lead. I understand."

"You must tell him eventually," she says after a pause. "Joachim."

His chuckle is rueful, because she is right, but not for the reasons she assumes. "I imagine so. I will slay that dragon when its wings darken my path."

He has a long way to go in the interim, in time and in earthly distance. Bull's word come back to him from the night: _You just have to wait._ Wait and remain, remember and journey. What are bonds between people but the choice to always return?

While the first lesson this journey had for him was loss, the second--he has to assume, against every natural inclination to sarcasm--has been hope.

Cassandra grabs him by the shoulder, embraces him quick and hard, and lets him go.

"I will keep you in my prayers."

"I thank you for your prayers," Dorian says, his voice hushed, "dear friend."

She stands, hand lofted in farewell, until he rides through the stableyard arch and out, out towards the road.

  


*

  


_In half a year, the winter rains will fall hard on Trevis. The cypresses on the carriageway will drip dark and damp, faithful sentinels of the old inn._

_Maybe they'll meet by the fire in the common room, grasp arms like old friends and let the other patrons puzzle at them, the Tevinter and the Tal-Vashoth._

_Maybe, instead, on the porch, under the warding-tree planted by a more superstitious generation. Dorian will point it out, laugh about it, share some paltry discomfort from the road. Bull's men will no doubt have provided another entertaining tidbit to tell in answer._

_Or, if either of them arrives late, he will knock on a door and stop on the threshold. They'll meet there, on the boundary of common and private, open space and shelter._

Hey, you, _Bull will say._

Hello, _Dorian will reply, and mean,_ I missed you.

  


_end_

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Toft is my hero of the last lookover. ♥ Thanks also to Kay, Riss, Jasper, Mary and Lore for the multitudinous writing sprints that helped this one to the end.


End file.
